March 2012
5 posts
Lettuce beef cereal, future generations? *Part 2
By the time that I was a sophomore in high school, I had very few friends that were also sophomores. I had many close friends but just a few were the same age as me. It wasn’t because I was lame or that I didn’t like anyone in my class, but it was because I had grown tired with the way they viewed the world. Yet what choice did they have but view it in a similar fashion, they had completed every grade together, and like a herd, were then advanced in unison to the next level of education. I had become great friends with people just a few years younger and older. It was so refreshing to see a completely different understanding coming from people in the same school exposed to the same curriculum, just a different age.
I was in the 5th grade when there was an earthquake epicentered just outside our town. I went to school and listened to my class recall what they were doing or thinking when it struck, roughly the same thing with roughly the same perspective. Although this was a minor Earthquake it was life altering, there was a phenomenal shift in our perspective of the world. The ground had always been constant and for the first time in all of our lives, it shook, it rumbled, and life revealed its fragility. Years later when I recalled the very same event with new friends of different ages, I got very different accounts of the quake. If I had been integrated with different age groups during these life altering instances, could I have benefited from their different perspectives? It is a great disservice to our future to isolate and educate children only within their immediate age group, it is the only time in their lives that this happens.
Post academic life requires integration with people of all ages and and backgrounds, we show up for life socially stunted and mentally unprepared for this. We leave school with broad academic knowledge, a basic understanding of our own language, a very large collection of rudimentary tools, and no specific skill set. We have covered “all” of the basics even “required” all of them, but instilled little in the way of understanding others.
Here is a great video that I ripped off a bunch of ideas from. This man is more eloquent and he has an accent.
More soon.
Lettuce beef cereal, future generations? *Part 1
As individuals and as a whole I believe that a phenomenal change is taking place in almost every aspect of life. We are living under circumstances unlike anything the world has ever dealt with before. Physical evolution has peaked and started to decline in favor of a more intellectual embodiment. We’ve become pacified with hedonistic distractions and stricken with anxiety due to the overwhelming amount of options at our fingertips. We live in an era where everything is expected to be provided instantaneously, because chances are, it can be. Obtaining information has become almost effortless with a quick search on an Iphone, leaving little to speculate. So are we realizing our full potential by utilizing this time freed by an age of convenience? Or are we mesmerized by the subtle suggestions woven intricately into this new way of daily life. WE BE ZOMBIES!! WE NEED INFO!!!. This new order of consumerism will definitely attempt to capitalize on the way the next generation will be educated. Unlike any before them, our youth knows only of a life prior to the Internet, prior to social marketing, and prior to this captivated nation through the memories of its elders. But this technology also brings opportunity, so lets not squander it.
Our 21st Century enlightenment may be to realize that the methods in which we educate our children will likely become ineffective, these previous standards have ultimately failed on a broad spectrum. We need to reevaluate the ideology that has defined our policies for classroom learning by embracing the individual abilities of each student.
From an early age children understand their abilities on a subconscious level, removing ego and pride they will gravitate toward what makes the most sense. They are inherently drawn to what comes most naturally, and eventually this becomes physically evident. If we study and evaluate these tendencies we can guide students down a path that will be most beneficial to their individual success and ultimately, to become a more productive member of society.
So where does the tech come in? Lets place 30 random 10 year olds in a quiet room with one adult in front of him writing on a chalkboard. Holy boring Christ! these kids are complex little fuckers by age 10. They can play XBOX, update their facebook, and talk on the phone all simultaneously-and this single boring asshole with some chalk, is supposed to stimulate their minds?…yep. Allot of people thrived in this system, but many more were a tremendous “failure”.
I am one of those failures. For example- I “needed” to learn how to solve equations that already had answers, these answers were already known, and there was a right and wrong path leading to them….. Gosh, that sounds like fun. I fucking suck at math and I am sooooo comfortable with that. So while I am bashing my head against the wall watching everyone else easily understand the arithmetic, I start to feel like a failure. Meanwhile the other subjects in which I thrive are falling to the side while I try to wrap my head around this jumble fucked number game. I fall behind in other classes because homework that should take me a 1/2 hour at night is requiring more time than I have. I start to fail not only math but other classes…..Feeling overwhelmed and incapable……Long story short, I’m a 17 year old drop out who only frequents the home of the Grizzlies to during break and lunch to sell weed to rich kids for far more than its worth. My teenage logic-I’M A FUCKING GENNNNNEEEUSSSSS!
More soon.